Mobile Commerce

  Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013, will go down as one of the payments industry’s more notable days of the deal. First, payments-software developer ACI Worldwide Inc. announced plans to buy Online Resources Corp. in a deal that values the electronic bill-payment and presentment technology provider at $263 million. Then the big processor …

  Intuit Inc. on Monday acquired the assets of Palo Alto, Calif.-based Payvment Inc., a 3-year-old vendor of shopping-cart and payment tools for merchants operating on social networks. Terms of the deal, which capped a series of developments that for some observers cast doubt on the market for so-called social …

Mobile bill payments took a step forward Thursday when automated clearing house network overseer NACHA reported that its Council for Electronic Billing and Payment (CEBP) had developed final guidelines for consumers to use Quick Response (QR) codes on bills to facilitate electronic payments. The guidelines are voluntary for billers, banks …

U.S. consumers are rapidly turning to mobile devices to pay bills, and that trend in turn is likely to encourage more card usage for bill payment and more electronic bill presentment, according to a study released this week. Some 8% of households with an Internet connection paid at least one …

n Passbook? The topic of Apple Inc.’s loyalty application didn’t come up Wednesday afternoon when the leading Silicon Valley tech company’s top brass discussed their latest quarterly results, which stock analysts found disappointing. But some smart-phone industry observers see evidence that Apple is laying the groundwork for a full-fledged mobile-payments …

A buoyant John Donahoe, chief executive of eBay Inc., said on Wednesday that PayPal Inc.’s launch on the Discover Network is “on track” to begin toward the end of the second quarter. A key part of eBay unit PayPal’s strategy to bring its payment service to the physical point of …

The Shazam debit network on Monday took a step closer to entering the fray for near real-time person-to-person payments with the launch of its Shazam Bolts mobile app. The app, which works on smart phones and tablets running Apple Inc.’s iOS software, will initially enable financial-institution customers to receive alerts …

Prepaid card program manager Green Dot Corp. launched its GoBank mobile-banking application Tuesday. The app gives struggling Green Dot a powerful weapon to fight competitors for underbanked consumers or those simply dissatisfied with mainstream banks, including American Express Co., issuer of the new, low-fee Bluebird prepaid card account for customers …

  U.S. Bancorp is joining the ranks of banks and tech companies testing near-field communication (NFC) technology by pairing a rewards credit card account with Apple Inc.’s iPhone in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Portland, Ore. The Minneapolis-based banking company is offering new holders of its FlexPerks Travel Rewards Visa …

While many brick-and-mortar retailers were disappointed with sales for the 2012 holiday season, online merchants posted respectable gains in the mid-teens, according to new reports. Internet usage tracker comScore Inc. reported on Thursday that e-commerce volume hit $42.3 billion in the November-December holiday shopping season, up 13.8% over $37.2 billion …